Looking For Horror Blogs
Beginning in mid-March (I’m thinking the 13th) I’ll be heading out on (what I hope is) my biggest blog tour yet…
With the coming release of Dying Days 2 and Still Dying: Select Scenes From Dying Days, I’m going to be guest blogging and interviewing on some old friends’ blogs as well as somke new ones, and I’d like to add as many more as I can to the list… that’s where you come in!
If you have a blog that is into horror (or a blog that isn’t normally but would be interested in my zombie books) I’d like to hear from you and add a date with your blog… I’ll be doing Giveaways, maybe promotional giveaways, who knows… the more blogs I can get the better and bigger it will be…
If you’re a fan of a particular blog let me know as well, because I’ll be contacting them for the tour and need all the help I can get.
In fact, if anyone goes above and beyond in helping me, besides my eternal gratitude and goodwill, I’ll throw in some freebies like eBooks, signed print books, and (if you live close to Florida) let you buy me an expensive lunch… and I might need new shoes. We’ll figure it out.
Old Stories Making New Stories
A long, long time ago in a galaxy… OK, about 6 or 7 years ago… I began publishing my fantasy short stories in my epic Freehold series, and did this huge Thieve’s World thing as a shared world, with great authors adding their stories, and we’d all sell tons of books, and… it became a mess, I owed (still owe) people lots of money, lots of broken promises, tons of unpublished shorts and novellas, and it led to the demise of my own Carnifex Press. A dark period for me and others…
A few months ago I quietly published a novella Freehold: Betrayal as well as a companion short story Freehold: Corpsepaint, and watched them both do absolutely nothing…
I gave up on my dreams of becoming a great fantasy writer like Tolkien, Martin, and Moorcock… I’ll just stick to horror and zombies and… steampunk…
As you know from reading this blog (and taking notes of my every move, I’m sure) I’ve been dabbling in steampunk lately, because I’ve always been a fan of it as a reader.
In my very first short story I needed a name of a government agent who was a bit on the bad side, a strong character who didn’t hold back. I ‘stole’ the name Kruk from my Freehold baddie Bliack Kruk… easy enough, as only a couple of his stories had ever actually seen print.
In recent weeks I’d also been in contact with names from my past Carnifex Press days, notably Boone Dryden (who is back onboard as an editor), and Cythnia Rodania, who penned some great pirate stories for Freehold that we never published (well, it turns out she did publish those great pirate stories in some way or another), and they are both also big fans of steampunk.
And then it hit me… those old fantasy stories had some good plots and characters (even though my writing has been much improved over the last 6 or 7 years, I’d like to think) and they’d sit trunked forever… until now.
I’m pondering whether or not to use some of them, which can be easily converted into steampunk Victorian ideas, and create an entirely new universe and new adventures with these ‘old friends’…
After all, mad kings, outpost towns, political plots and assassinations, jealousy, barbaric creatures, beggars and thieves, the search for knowledge, dragons… OK, the dragon part can go, but the rest?
Excellent… add this to my list of Works In Progress… as if I don’t have enough to do already…
Dying Days 2 Finished!
I wrote the very last lines of Dying Days 2 at exactly 11:58 pm on February 25th… with exactly 2 minutes to spare in my deadline.
Once again, I cut it to the very end, but I am happy I did. I think it’s my best work so far in my career (we’ll call it a career, I’m excited right now)… I was so worried about being behind, but I managed 27k words of this rough first draft, and my three beta readers have already begun the task of marking it up with problems.
Today I think I’ll toy around with promotions, updating the Twitter account, pulling out a new index card for the week ahead and figuring out what the next 15 projects are going to be.
It is such a great feeling to finish something, but I’m also sitting here feeling sad. Another group of great characters perished, and the Darlene Bobich saga is stopped once again. Will there be more? I think so.
I guess only the readers can really tell me if it’s worth sweating another month of deadlines…
Two New Zombie Book Covers
I’m almost finished with Dying Days 2 (the first draft, anyway) and then March will be for edits, rewrites and all that boring stuff.
In case you didn’t know, I’ve also been writing a companion novella as well, Still Dying: Scenes From Dying Days, featuring short stories of some characters from the first two Dying Days books as well as new characters… what I like to do sometimes, as I’m writing a new character into the series, is do a quick short piece about them leading up to their entrance, or perhaps an origin piece… I’m currently about 10k into this book and hope to finish it right after Dying Days 2 is done and then release them both at the same time…
I also toyed with the idea of doing another Kickstarter campaign and seek donations to have you written into a flash fiction, short story or even a novella of your own… might jump on that asap…
The cover art was done (once again) by the wonderfully talented Ash Arceneaux http://www.asharceneaux.deviantart.com/
Here are the two covers… tell me what you think!
0 For 2 on Subs This Week
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say rushing through short stories to meet a deadline within a few hours might not be as productive as it was a long time ago (or, in my case, a few weeks ago)…
Before this last writing burst, I finished a few other short stories at the last minute and submitted them… and went eight for eight in acceptances, even with four of them written literally at the last minute.
Could lightning strike again? So far… no.
Two short stories have been rejected of the five I wrote recently, including the fungi story that I really, really liked. And they simply said ‘not for us’ (paraphrasing, of course, but there wasn’t any notes accompanying the rejection)… but that’s what happens, right?
I’ll add it to the bottom of the pile, and when it comes back around I’ll edit it again, maybe change a spot or two, and either resubmit it or simply bundle it with my previous “Rainforest of Bones” short story featuring the same character, write a third story with him, and release it as a three-pack of horror shorts…
It’s already after 2 pm and I haven’t written a single word of Dying Days 2 today… this is why I love days like yesterday, where I can roll over 3k in words, but wish I could sustain that momentum… went to breakfast, hours killed in WalMart, and then answered e-mails, traded blog links, got my new business cards from UPS (I’ll scan one later, very cool!) and generally wasted time doing household stuff like trying to get out of actually doing household stuff.
Tonight my goal is at least a thousand words… I have a big turning point in Dying Days 2 coming up this next chapter, so I know once I start it will get done.
And might’ve gotten a cool artist to do the book covers for my Steampunk releases, so I’m excited about that…
Steampunk Short Stories
As some of you might know, I’m a Steampunk fan but never wrote too much in the subgenre until recently. I decided to write something a bit different from my horror stuff (especially the extremely graphic zombie work), something my eleven-year old daughter could read.
I created a character (Clockwork Katelynn), a setting (Arizuma, in the Old West of the Western Colonies), an agent of the Ministry of Defense for Mother England (Kruk), and wrote two short stories in two days.
Then I followed these up with three more steampunk short stories featuring one or both of the main characters and submitted those three to anthologies.
One of them came back rejected today already, which is fine in the grand scheme of things. With the way publishing works today, I’ll stick it in the bottom of the pile, do a rewrite when I get back to it, and either re-send it to another anthology or add it to a collecton of all these short stories.
I’m going to be at a Steampunk convention in Daytona Beach in mid-April and would like to have a Steampunk print book in hand to sell if possible. The goal was to write a short novella with these characters (15k-20k) and have the great editors/readers I use go through it chapter by chapter as I write it), and have it debut at this show.
Now, I’m thinking if one more of the remaining two come back, I might bundle the shorts into a release, add some more stories, and easily hit 20k… and if all three get rejected… nope, gotta be positive!
The rejection also drops me back down to earth with the streak of eight straight acceptances broken, but that’s fine. I’ll just have to start it over, right?
Dying Days 2 Writing
After a great weekend spent with my youngest daughter – playing UNO and Tetris on the PS2 (I dominated in both games) – I got barely any writing in. Sure, I kept up with e-mails and Twitter and read a good book or three on the Kindle, but no actual writing got done other than a few quick lines here and there…
That puts me firmly behind… by the end of today I need to be at 21k, but I’m only at 16k, and I spent the morning chopping large chunks of the last two chapters that I didn’t like and knew needed to go away…
One problem I might have is that I’ve introduced some new, fresh secondary characters and they all have their own minds, own agendas, and probably all want to live. Unfortunately, they’re starring in an extreme zombie apocalypse novella, so that might not happen. It’s called Dying Days 2 for a reason.
Another problem is having many more secondary plotlines running through this one, and it might call for more than 25k, which I’ll be fine with, but it will push me into March with the writing and I already have other writing plans for next month.
We’ll see…
So, my new goal is now 9k in 9 days with no off-days or getting behind again… can I do it? Sure, it’s just another deadline…
JA Konrath is the Devil
Yep, I said it…
It’s been on the minds of every struggling author for too many days and months and years…
JA Konrath is Satan, the Devil, Evil Incarnate, Lucifer, or something right out of an Edward Lee book.
You see, I’ve been an avid reader of his blog, his books, and his books about his blogs. At any given moment one of his blog posts is either on my computer or on my Kindle.
I’m not a successful author – yet – but I’m enjoying myself, selling a handful of eBooks (I’ve averaged over a hundred total sales per month, but I have 30+ releases, so you do the math there) and meeting new and exciting people that I hope will love me back, say nice things about me and buy a copy of each of the 30+ books for sale.
I fall into the illusion that I’m doing well, even though bills pile up, Kim yells at me to get a job that pays me money AND keep writing, my car is currently dead in the driveway, and I’m constantly checking my bank account for ‘miracle money’, like a dead long-lost aunt or the bank to screw up and deposit thousands in my account.
Then along comes the next blog post or next entry in a JA Konrath blog book, and I read about his success and what he did to make himself a success, and I get that feeling in my stomach like I’ve been kicked by a soccer team. I hate soccer.
But the worst part? When he talks of 500 rejections, promotion and publishers he’s made mistakes about, things he’s done wrong, and dead-ends in his career.
I don’t want to hear that! I want him to simply say ‘I wrote my first book, it sold millions, I made millions, I bought beer with my millions, so had to write book two for more beer money, and so on and so on.’ That would make me feel better.
The thought that I might be able to be as big as JA Konrath – hey, it might conceivably happen, read his posts! – gives authors hope that someday they’ll turn that corner.
Bastard.
And I’m not simply talking about huge sales, I’m talking about recognition and being able to pay the bills and be happy as an author.
You know, like JA Konrath seems to be doing now that he’d embraced eBooks and paved the way for the rest of us.
He’s making me try harder, write better, see what works and doesn’t work, and promote myself while meeting new and exciting people.
The Giveaway I’m running right now (see the post here) is going quite well, adding more people to my blog and Twitter accounts, putting my name out there with constant retweets of my post, and meeting new people.
Will it turn into eBook sales? That’s the goal, always the goal. And JA Konrath has proven that it can be done, you just need to try new and different things and see what works and doesn’t work for you.
Like I keep telling you, this dude is the Devil.
Two Contests For My Followers
I’ve decided to be nice to people, since they are sometimes nice to me… karma and all that crap…
Anyway, I’ll be running two contests at the same time because (if you know me and read this blog) you’ll know I do everything crazy and to make it a bit hard on myself, like stupid deadlines and too many projects at once…
My goal is pretty simple:
First, I want to build my followers for this blog. I know, based on the number of daily views I get, that I’m doing pretty good. And the comments are pretty sweet each post, I’ve been able to connect with new people and make new friends. But I want more,oh so more… I’d like more actual blog followers, people who hit the cute ‘follow’ button and/or subscription button and hang on my every word…
To date I have 559 WordPress.com blog followers. The contest is simple: for every 1,000 followers I will choose one random follower to win a FREE eBook copy of
and every 2,00 followers will win a FREE signed print copy of Darlene Bobich: Zombie Killer… pretty cool, eh? Just my way of saying thanks…
The second contest, running at the same time, is for Twitter… with the same rules and same prizes BUT the way I’ll pick random winners is simple… by posting (or retweeting) the following tweet, I’ll save your Twitter name and then private message the winners… just post it, mention me, get people to like me, etc. etc. Simple, right?
#DarleneZombie RT To Win FREE Zombie books INFO: http://tinyurl.com/77r7fbz BOOK: http://tinyurl.com/7jq8obl @ArmandAuthor
I currently have 3,149 Twitter followers, so I already owe three eBooks and a Print book to start, and then keep it going as long as it doesn’t die out…
And I might toss in some other contests, change up the books a bit, add more to it, and take suggestions as well…
Again, my small way of saying Thank You…
Falling In Love… With Your Main Character
We’ve all done it as writers… we create a character for a specific story, and then get so into the character that he/she takes over and writes the story themselves, from each line to the next. Suddenly they’re running the show, dragging you along as they fight evil, kill zombies, solve mysteries, find true love or their missing daughter… and we never want him/her to end…
Case in point… for those who don’t know, I write a series of extreme zombie books in the Dying Days series, starring Darlene Bobich. What started as a simple flash fiction piece for an anthology has grown into thousands of words spent on this character. I can toss anything in her way and she reacts. I write. Simple as that. She tells the story.
Except, the nagging question, especially when writing horror and especially especially when writing zombie fiction is… when/if the main character dies?
If you’ve read any of my work, whether short stories, novellas or flash pieces, you know I have a tendency to kill someone, anyone… especially the main character.
All those years ago, when I read George R.R. Martin’s epic series, I was stunned when main characters died… how could he kill the fucking main character?!?!! I read the rest of the books and looked at each character differently. If he could kill Ned (oh, and others! Just wait for the HBO series to return!), no one was safe, every page might be their last. I loved it.
I decided that was the right way to do it.
Back in my junior high and high school days I was the coolest kid, Prom King, graduated first in my class…
Nope. Actually, I was the long-haired Metal-head who skated by with decent grades and spent most of my waking time playing Dungeons & Dragons.
Campaigns got boring pretty fast when none of the player’s characters died and everyone amassed huge sums of coins and magic weapons. Of course, I ran a few campaigns as Dungeon Master where I killed almost everyone, and that got boring as well.
There’s a fine line there, and something I’m always looking at. Should your main character die? Everyone around him/her? Anyone?
Eventually, Dying Days will have to end. Already I have a full plate with other non-zombie projects, and don’t have set plans for a Dying Days 3 or other Darlene Bobich stories. Not saying I won’t write them.
Hell, I might just kill her off in Dying Days 2 and see how that works.
But that will be the hardest death I ever have to write. Someday she might die… hopefully before she amasses all the coins and magic weapons and people stop caring if she lives or dies.
